The Roman villas in northwestern France functioned as colonial economic centers, along with Roman residential urban aspirations. Most of the villas were not like the luxury aristocratic country retreats of the Mediterranean. Their owners were absentee investors or even the emperor himself, but they were managed by local Gauls whose family chose the right side during the Gallo-Roman Wars.
It is difficult for archeologists to define villas. The reason for this is the recovered residences are varied in size and style, often determined by the underlying economic function. However, all sites labeled as villas contain Roman architectural elements found in homes, such as mosaics, porticos, columns, and square ground plans.
At first the new Roman masters physically changed very little in Gaul, they simply refined the rural economic system in an already intensely farmed landscape. The Roman landlords did this refining by technological improvements, and enhancing economic structures, which included the transport of goods and raw materials to larger markets.
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The Gauls, or Celts who lived in Gaul, or modern France were a culture not a race, a nation, or an empire. They were advanced in metal working and cattle raising. The culture began to dominate in France around 800 BCE, and replaced the existing culture, but not the people.
The Celtic landscape resembles today's countryside with open fields rather than woods, but Celtic fields were smaller,often square. More fields were used for pasture than for crops, however, because the need for cattle, sheep, and animal forage. The Gauls intensely managed the forest for wood and forest products much more than today. As mentioned before, the Romans only enhanced the system but did not dramatically alter it.[1]
Villages and hamlets would have been more dense in the countryside in the Roman period and the population equal to the number of the time of Louis XIV, about 20 million people.[2] At this time Roman Britain's population of 4-6 million people would equal later medieval numbers.[3] Homes were better constructed than most houses made throughout the middle ages, although built with the same local materials: timber uprights with plaited wicker, which were coated with clay, straw and animals hair.[4]
Julius Caesar and his Roman legions succeeded in the conquest of Gaul from 57 to 52 BCE, at the invitation of the Gauls in Marseille, who asked the Romans to come to their defense, and then they let things get out of hand.[5]
The Romans occupied and managed the Empire with a minimum of administrators, no police force and an army primarily located on the frontiers, much like the French colonial Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries. A few Roman natives lived in the major provincial towns, but most government and economic functions were carried out by locally hired Gauls. This "minimalist Empire" left most people and institutions untouched. New Roman settlements were relatively few . If one paid his taxes and kept the peace, life really didn’t change much in the early centuries of occupation. Most Gallo-Romans kept the old ways.[6]
The primary early Roman modifications were a few technological improvements, and links to a market economy, which often meant new Roman roads and supplying the Roman army. The major technological addition was a bigger plough possibly invented in Gaul, which could break up the heavier soil. These new ploughs cut deeper into the soil and the ploughman could regulate the depth.It was usually pulled by 4 to 8 oxen and was improved by three parts.
The results of the innovations were longer fields, which worked well on large estates.It also enabled population growth with the surplus food produced.[7]
Roman investors, possibly living in North Africa, bought and sold land then used local Gallic lords to manage the new villa system. These new managers built the villas we find today, which historians refer to as romanitas, or Romanized Gallic villas. These Gauls had upwardly mobile aspirations, and created a wide variety of homes. Villas ranged from two room cottages to palaces more in keeping with the Roman idealization of life. Archaeological sites today indicate this in mosaics, columns and other typical Roman features. This romanitas was a passport to a new world of consumer goods, personal prestige, and advancement: the luxuries of the urban world found the countryside.[8]
Originally historians believed Roman villas to be primarily near urban centers and major roads. Historians' view of villas stressed their economically autonomy since transport over land was expensive and slow, even with the improvement of Roman roads throughout Gaul. This view has changed.
Today scholars think villas were linked to a broader Empire economy through a system of secondary and tertiary Roman roads. These roads were sometimes built and or maintained by villa owners, especially if the road crossed an owner's land. Owners often hired surveyors, geologists and labourers to do the work.[9]
Villa sites were places of previous occupation over hundreds and possibly thousands of years, in order to reuse stone, water sources, raw materials, transportation links like roads and waterways.[10] In pre Roman Gaul, tribal areas were divided into units approximately parish size(pagi). Each pagus usually had a village at its center. Sometimes Iron Age settlements relocated to be near a Roman road.[11]
An adequate water source was the primary reasons for site location for villas. Wells were often dug to immense depth to insure enough drinking and cleaning water to satisfy the family and the labor. However, the strongest need was for over wintering cattle and horses. Enough clean water was also essential for watermills and eventually baths: the Roman lifestyle indicator of true civilized life.[12]
As mentioned before archaeologists have had difficulties defining villas as there were many local, regional, and functional variations. Villa size range from 2 rooms to many acres for rambling houses. Often the use of the word villa comes down to the architectural style with residential urban Roman features like porticos and columns.[13][14]
Most villas were food production operations made up of cultivated fields, meadows, and forest. Timber use then was much more important than today. Watermills, cowsheds, corn driers, wine cellars and kilns were typical farm buildings. Villa production yielded wool, leather, tallow, in addition to the expected food products. Hunting, fowling and fishing were not recreation, but important protein sources.[15] Beef was more important in northern France and pork in southern France. Sheep were more common in non villa areas.[16]
Transport of produce overland was once thought to be too expensive, but amphorae and delicate ceramics were trucked across water-challenged North Africa, making archeologists rethink logistics in the ancient world.[17]
Although Romans extensively used barges towed up rivers by oxen, horses, or slaves on the Rhone River, it is not known if the same system was used on the smaller rivers of Lower Normandy. It would have been necessary to secure rights of way, no problem for the state, and maintain a clear riverside track to provide traction for beast and bare-feet.[18]
Roman villas could also have industrial production, in addition to food and other essentials. Some of the most common alternative villas are the following along with significant features.[19]
All villas paid a pre-determined income tax and inheritance death duties,(tributum) in cash. For materials sold to the army, most commonly leather and corn, everything was processed on site. The results were then sent through the Empire’s posting stations (mansion) to the northern frontier.[22] All industrial villas bought food, iron for tools, wood and other materials locally, while hiring local labor as well.[22]
Slave based villas existed in large numbers especially after the wars of conquest, but they didn’t dominate. Free peasants and tenant farmers working for villas were common as well.[23] The primary source of slaves was war, but abandoned property owners were rounded up and treated as slaves, so there were many ways to lose one’s freedom.[24]
Slaves were considered expensive assets, so they were well cared for. Sometimes several hundred slaves served a medium size villa. They were treated as thinking, self-motivated “instruments” with different skills and mentalities. Owners were firm but tolerant, and admonished as well as encouraged sometimes with small rewards. Women were specialized as well in a variety of jobs: cooks, hairdressers, weavers, and laundresses.[25]
After periods of political upheaval, a father’s job legally bound his son to the same work.[24] The Roman institution of slavery in the Empire also provided other options. Many were freed for good service, which was an incentive. There were also opportunities to earn bonuses to buy freedom. A promising young slave might attend the children’s lessons. An owner would thus cultivate his own secretaries, accountants, administrators, and tutors; he could then rent them out for income, as well. The Emperor's slaves acted as insiders to the wealth system, and thus could became wealthy themselves.[26]
By the end of the second century BCE, 80% of the population consisted of emancipated slaves or their descendants. After the wars of expansion as the slave pool dried up, villas converted to leasehold or employed laborers. By the end of the Empire, most slaves worked in domestic service, working in the owners’ private staff, and not on the estates as labor. [26]
Over five centuries the villa took on many variations and forms. Sometimes the villa began as a simple cottage, which became embedded in complex of buildings and additions. Or, large investor colonial villas was designed and built fully formed. Toward the Empire’s end, the villas became more numerous but much smaller.[27]
The classic great villa consisted of a main house with a veranda, which looked over two rows of buildings, or wings, often were not parallel, but diverging to enhance the effect of distance. The rooms were interconnected by the veranda, or porch acting as a corridor. Each room filled different functions and all offered little privacy. Some villas were several rooms deep and lit by a clerestory or dormer windows. Thick walls indicate villas could have been two to three stories tall, with attics used as storage.[28]
Although fireplaces with hoods have been found, most heating was by braziers burning charcoal or coal. Rarely, a central room was heated by hypocausts, or under floor hot air provided by fires beneath the house. The venting ran up the walls of the villa and emptied under the roof eaves. This source of venting made the home appear to be on fire by the smoke billowing out from the roof edges and walls.[29]
Kitchens were unsophisticated with the main feature being the masonry hearth with a charcoal fire. A few coals would have been scraped into a pile and a portable grill would support a pot to simmer or to grill some meat. Kitchens were often near baths, as they both needed water. Both were detached or at the end of a building, because of fire risk. Some kitchen fireplace ovens used refractory brick, which allowed heat to slowly released into another room. Thus, adjoining rooms might be library/study’s, storage rooms for drying split wood or wine being artificially aged. Kitchen ceilings were high in order to reduce the chance that the roof would catch fire.[30][31]
Lavatories were used in towns but not at villas. The trees were nearby. Rubbish went out the window or into pits.[30]
Both interior and exterior walls along with columns might be painted in bright colors, such as red and purple, brown, and white. Roof tiles could be bright sky blue that was made by the clay baking process. Painted wall murals rarely survive, but were very popular.[32]
At least one mosaic appears in all villas, usually on the floor in public areas, and especially in dining rooms at Empire’s end. Set in hard Roman cement and buried under collapsed debris, thousands of these have been found throughout northern Europe. Simple mosaics were geometric patterns, but an enormous range of cultural and artistic aspects of Roman life were portrayed. Sometimes arcane understandings of classical literature and Roman mythology were presented.[32]
Furniture was sparse by today’s standards: cupboard, sideboard, occasional table were set along the walls and brought out when needed. Simple frame beds were for sleeping. In the late Empire, dining was on reclining couches set in threes. Most rooms were square with chairs and small table. [32] More money did not mean more furniture, but more expensive, high quality furniture.[33]
The most distinctly structure at the villa was the Roman bath, the architectural showpiece. It was warm, noisy, clean and lavishly decorated. There were two types: Spartan with sauna style dry heat and high temperatures, and a “Turkish” or damp heat version with plunge baths. A well equipped bath would provide both, with the bather entering a unheated room to undress, then a warm room, a still warmer room, finally a hot bath where a massage might happen and then cleansing. The cleansing was not with soap, but with slathering on olive oil and scraping the oil off with a bronze tool called a strigil, along the dirt emerging from the sweat in the pores. The last was the cold plunge bath and a latrine if it was a public bath, which a private villa was not.[34]
Lighting for the baths came through narrow lancet windows. Rarely, pale green glasses, either glazed or held by cross- bars, have been found in the windows.[35] Personal lighting came from hand carried oil lamps. Some lamps had multiple wicks providing more light, but consuming much more olive oil. One full oil lamp could burn 40 to 50 hours.[33]
On the exterior of the villa hinged, wooden shudders protected windows. Walls were either rendered or exposed timber and frame. Roofs were thatch, tile, stone, terra cotta, or all of the above with occasional stone finials.[36]
Flower gardens decorated the villas, but today’s variety make the plantings seem more like ordered patches of wild flowers. These gardens were considered necessary for use during festivals; decorating family alters, and banquets. Common flowers were roses, violets, lilies, narcissus, sunflowers, carnations, hyacinths, bluebells, and snapdragons.[37]
Vegetable gardens were laid out in beds and grew food such as lettuce, cabbage, leeks, beans, radishes. Fruits might be apples, pears, cherries, figs, almonds, and plums.[37]
Most villas had at least one aisled-barn, or very rarely two. These barns stored equipment, produce, but never animals. Archeologists find indicators in these barns for corn drying, metalwork and communal kitchens. These aisled-barns may have been partitioned. Workers often slept where they worked.[38]
Roman villas are a good place to see the Christianization of Europe, because the country villa served as "pieces of cities broken off", and Christianity originated as an urban religion. [39] The Galois aristocrats benefitted from conversion by closer ties to Rome and the Emperor's family after Constantine’s conversion. Roman culture was very flexible, so a multicultural blend or "sympathetic" intermingling usually was the result, with many villas seeming ambiguous.[40] The local peasants were ignored in their pagan ways, and pre-Roman religious sites morphed into Roman cult sites and then later into Christian pilgrimage destinations. Because the church was the writer and maintainer of all records throughout the fall of Rome and the Middle ages, historians really know little about the beliefs on the local level.[41]
Historians really only know in general terms about pre-Christian beliefs, Celtic religion, and now archeology is adding new knowledge. Peasants on the villa estates held to a complex polytheism with many strands.[42] Caesar says Mercury, called Lug by the Gauls, was the highest, but there were many nature gods and goddesses for war, thunder, trees, youth, and even time together. The earth goddesses were Divona for water, Onuava for earth, and Epona for horses and fertility.[43]
The upper class villa managers and owners were dependant on the native workers in the countryside. The aristocrats celebrated country life for its sturdy virtues, rude health, and innocent pleasures. However, the reality was a strong disdain for peasants mingled with fear, contempt, and disgust.[44]
Peasants always have faced forces beyond their control and they sought to improve and influence their situation by religious acts. The Romans were very pragmatic culture and encouraged intermingling of religion; pre-Roman religious sites morphed into Roman cult sites and those evolved into Christian sites.[41]
Villa owners sometimes created religious sites on their estates as a destination for pilgrimages, but most of these were abandoned in the Christian era. Aerial photography has confirmed pagan temples in high density villa areas determined by their distinct square with over 40 in Picardy alone.[45]
At first as the central Empire declined villas became more self sufficient, and less linked to the larger market economy. At the same time, more smaller villas appeared indicating Roman culture and values. As Rome waned, the provinces waxed, at first.[46][47]
Starting in 235 AD with the death of Emperor Severus Alexander a series of short lived, incompetent Emperors ruled Rome. They usually died violently after serving an average 2.6 years. Generals broke away and sometimes raided the countryside. Bubonic plague or malaria may have swept the provinces. Villa owners feared bandit armies as well. A manpower shortage made fewer people paying more taxes. [48] Some continental villa investors may have moved their holdings to Roman Britain, but then things really fell apart.[49]
From 257 CE to 276 CE began the first series of barbarian invasions pillaging the countryside. These outsiders sensed the disorganization of the Imperial armies on the frontier, and took advantage of the power vacuum.[48]
Roman rulers tried to debase the currency to buy off the armies, thus creating inflation. Crushing taxes on the rural population, mixed with the effort to escape the warring army factions and barbarians contributed to the anarchy.[51]
Starting in the early 300’s more villas appeared to be uninhabited. Coins and datable pottery become rare in the archaeological record. The market economy survived unpredictably in some regions in Gaul. During this time archaeologists have found more wooden, temporary construction on villa grounds, and some villas added fortifications.[52]
A more recent and nuanced view is that even though massacre sites at villas have been found, most barbarian newcomers arrived with a sickle rather than a sword. They wanted to be settlers. Backed by armed garrisons living nearby, the new occupiers moved in and dominated politically and culturally. By the early 400’s all villas seemed abandoned as their residences, but archeologists have found small homes built next to the large houses. Some villas seem to have served as cemeteries.Pollen analyses for this period found no drop in crops, indicating the population largely stayed in place and fed itself. [53][54]
In 467 CE the Roman Empire lost all control of its provinces in Gaul to the Franks. In 470 CE a mass migration to Britanny from Great Britain at this time, indicated the situation off the continent had also had deteriorated.[55]
However, there was continuity from the Roman villa culture and economy, although there were no blood line continuation from Gallo-Roman to Frank.[56]
The size and shape of the Roman estates did not change from Roman to Frankish occupation, meaning parish or commune boundaries remained from Roman and probably pre-Roman times.[56][57]
Some Christians willed their villas to the church in Spain, and the same could have happened in France. These became the basis of somemonasteries. Churches often sat on villa sites in the countryside as well.[58]
The word ville is thought to have originated as villa, thus place names often originated from the villa name.In the 8th to 12th centuries, Norman agglomerationsin France began to acquire names. The prefix -ville- indicates a rural name, and a suffix usually was for urban names meaning the domain of a families name. Most of this was done between the 10th and the 11th century.[59]
Aerial views are the best way to see Roman Gaul. Fields are often laid out in a more rectangular systemized plan with various building walls and foundations evident. However, without an archeological dig it is often impossible to know if the buildings are foundations of a Roman villa’s cult site, or early 2Oth century corn shed.[60]